onto my legs.
With the back of my hand I wiped away a tomato-sauce tear. No one had said anything. We sat like that for quite a while.
21
“Jesus Christ, I’ll never be able to do this if you don’t let me!”
We were standing by the wide-open kitchen window and the sun was in my eyes. Her hair shone so bright that I had trouble getting hold of it.
“Bend forward a little…”
Snip, snip. I evened out two locks. It had taken three days to get her to the point where she’d let me fix her hair. We were waiting for Eddie and Lisa to arrive that afternoon-that’s the real reason she let me. Three days to climb out of the hole. Her, that is, not me.
It turned out that short hair looked good on my little green eyed brunette. Thank God for small favors. I held the locks between my fingers and trimmed them like ripe stalks of black wheat. Her face was not exactly bursting with health, of course, but I was sure that a little pat on the cheeks would put her back in shape. I’d make the punch. I told her not to worry-people who come down from the city are always pale as death themselves.
I was right. Eddie had gotten a new car-a salmon-pink convertible-so they’d eaten quite a bit of dust on the way down. They looked like sixty-year-olds. Lisa jumped out of the car.
“Oh sweetheart, you cut your hair! Looks great!”
In the course of conversation, we made our way gently toward the punchbowl. It was dynamite, if I do say so myself. Lisa wanted to take a shower. The two girls disappeared into the bathroom with their drinks. Eddie slapped me on the thigh.
“Good to see you, you old bastard…!” he said.
“Yeah…” I said.
He took another look around, nodding.
“Yep, I got to take my hat off to you…”
I went to open a can of food for Bongo. Eddie and Lisa’s presence allowed me to loosen up a little. I needed it. For three days I’d wondered if we were going to make it, if I’d ever be able to get her spirits back up-bring her back to the land of the living. I’d given it all I had-all I had in my head, and in my gut. I’d fought like a wildman. It was difficult to fathom how far gone she was. I don’t know by what miracle we came through it, what wonderful tide carried us to the shore. I was exhausted. After an exercise like that, opening a can of dog food seemed like drilling through a safe to me. But two glasses of punch later I was walking into a rising sun. I listened to the girls laughing in the bathroom it seemed too beautiful for words.
When the flames of reunion had turned to embers, Eddie and I swung into action. The girls wanted to spend the first evening at home, necessitating some grocery shopping, not to mention a stop at Bob’s house to borrow a mattress and a Chinese-like partition. The punch was beginning to wear off. The day was coming to an end by the time we left the house. There was a light breeze. I would have felt just about fine, if I could have rid myself of one rather idiotic thought: Though I knew there was nothing I could do about it-it’s just one of the little differences between men and women-still, I couldn’t help thinking how unequally the pain of the recent events had been distributed. For me it remained somewhat abstract. I felt like there was an air pocket in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
We went and got the mattress and the partition from Bob’s house, then came back. We unloaded the mattress onto the sidewalk, swearing and huffing and puffing. The shocks of the car groaned. The trouble was that we couldn’t let the goddamn thing drag on the cement. We had to carry it. Next to the mattress, the partition felt light as a feather.
We made it upstairs, winded. The girls fussed over us. While I was getting my breath back, I felt the effects of the alcohol starting to multiply. My blood coursed through my veins at full throttle. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was the first time in three days that I had the sensation of having a body at all. The girls had made a shopping list for us. We went back downstairs at a sprint.
Once in town, we took care of business in no time flat. The trunk of the convertible was full. We were on our way out of the bakery, cake boxes under our arms, when this guy walked up to Eddie and threw his arms around him. I vaguely recognized him-I’d seen him the day of the funeral. He shook my hand. He was small and kind of old, but he still had a good grip. I moved away a little to let them talk. I smoked a cigarette and looked at the starlit sky. I overheard every other word. From what I could understand, the guy didn’t want to let us go so easily. He insisted that Eddie come see his new gym, just around the corner. He wouldn’t believe that we didn’t have five minutes to spare.
“What do we do?” I asked Eddie.
“Stop asking stupid questions, and follow me!” said the guy.
I put the cakes in the trunk. I can’t refuse, Eddie explained, I’ve known him for over twenty years. We had some good times together, back in the days when I helped him organize little regional bouts. He didn’t have gray hair back then. I told Eddie that I understood perfectly-it wasn’t very late and it didn’t bother me at all, really. We closed the trunk and took off, following the guy around the corner.
It was a small gym, smelling of leather and sweat. Two dudes were working out in the ring. You could hear the sound of gloves on skin, the water running in the showers. The old man led us behind a sort of counter. He brought out three sodas. His eyes were like bubbles.
“So, Eddie, what do you think?” he asked.
Eddie grazed his list affectionately on the old man’s jaw.
“Yeah, I get the feeling you run a pretty tight ship here…”
“The one in the green trunks is Joe Attila,” the old man said. “He’s my latest. You’re going to hear big things about him one of these days. He’s got the killer instinct… he’s got the stuff…”
He gave Eddie a phony right hook to the stomach. I slowly lost the flow of the conversation. I drank my soda pop and watched Joe Attila practice his technique on his sparring partner, an older guy in a red sweatsuit. Joe Attila laid into the old guy like a locomotive. The old guy hid behind his gloves, muttering, “Attaboy, Joe, keep it up, Joe, good boy.” Joe just let him have it, as hard as he wanted. For some reason, I was hypnotized by the spectacle-it set my brain on fire. I approached the ropes. I knew nothing about boxing. I’d seen maybe one or two matches in my whole life. I had never been particularly attracted to it. Once I got a spurt of somebody’s blood on my pants. Yet I sat there watching the old guy get showered with punches, my tongue hanging out like a junkie. All I saw were gloves shooting back and forth like arrows. I was captivated.
Eddie and his pal came up next to me, just as Joe was finishing the session. I was perspiring. I grabbed Eddie by the lapels.
“Eddie, look at me. You know, all my life I’ve dreamed of putting the gloves on-getting into the ring-just for one minute to pretend I’m slugging it out like a pro!”
Everybody laughed-Joe hardest of all. I insisted. I told them, “Just among friends, it’ll be fun-I just want to do it once before I die.” Eddie scratched his head.
“Are you kidding, or what…?”
I bit my lip and shook my head. He turned to his pal.
“Well, I don’t know… You think we could arrange something…?”
The old man turned to Joe.
“What do you think, Joe? Think you could hang in there another minute…?”
Joe’s laugh reminded me of a tree trunk rolling down a hill. I was so hyped up that I paid no attention. I was blinded by all the lights, short of breath. Joe grabbed the ropes and gave me a wink.
“Okay, why not? One little round, for fun…”
At that moment I suddenly got very scared-my whole body started to tremble. The oddest thing of all was that I found myself undressing, propelled by that force that draws you toward the void. My brain tried to play its card-it
